fromthemouthofmoi

Dear Daddy, Yesterday I found myself lonely for the first time in my life. I suddenly felt alone with a swelling need inside to talk to someone. Not just anyone but someone good and I blurted out aloud: Let me call dad! and just as suddenly I knew I couldn't.  You would have been the perfect one to have called. I can hear your voice now answering the call: Hi baby! And off we'd go for a two hour jaw wag. But you aren't here any longer and I don't have that luxury anymore. And for me, it was a luxury. So I called John. I was hesitant to call him because I have not often experienced him to be deep or sympathetic in the ways that matter to me. To the chronically ill he is the type to say: Get well soon. But call him I did and I found an old friend feeling just as I do as he has just recently lost the last of his parents; his mother. And for two hours I talked and he talked and I learned that he too felt the same pangs and fears of being single and alone and having a de...

A much earlier post, These Misunderstandings Between Us , has garnered the most traffic to this blog with well over 3 thousand hits. I have to assume that its topic struck a chord with many people. So I have decided to continue the conversation, taking it further, with a focus on negotiating and navigating sex. Sexual urges, no matter how frequent or infrequently they occur, are normal. If you like to do it five times a day or once a month, both of those scenarios are normal. Your desire for sexual contact is normal. When people marry, they talk about religion, finances, schooling for their children and a host of other things but rarely do people sit down with their partners and talk about sexual compatibility. If you couple with someone who wants intimacy once a day and you are a once a week person, both of you are soon to be miserable. The once a day person will feel unfulfilled followed by feelings of rejection and the once a week person is going to eventually feel put upon and st...

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I am hoping that the day will be wonderful for you wherever you are: Cuba, Mexico, England, Ireland, Germany, Ghana, California, Oregon, Canada, New York, The UK, Kentucky, and Minnesotta. Enjoy your friends and family!

Well you didn't actually knock, you banged a bit. And through the glass I could see you were a tall person. Who could it be? And I opened the door and there you stood, really, like a site for sore eyes! There really was a second of: pinch me, am I dreaming? Do my eyes deceive me? I had a sudden need to cry and hold you tight. I have missed you my friend! And then you sat down, like time never passed, and we began to talk about zeitgeist and art, about Melville, and London, about all the things that make me love you, and we did it in under fifteen minutes. Who else could? You are my treasure for my heart.

I have thought about this rut I am in and all it has felt like is a swamp of sorts. Like I am stuck in the mud: breathing but unable to move freely. What causes my unhappiness I ask myself, and most days I simply don't know. And then suddenly, I know. But then the next hurdle becomes: What do I do about it? And again I am thrown back to: I do not know. I want easy answers, quick ones in fact, but I have known this feeling before. And when I take time to listen and think, listen and think, I know I will come out the other side feeling clear. So I have begun looking for other places to live. I have begun looking for other people to talk to who have ideas about things that I know nothing about. I am gathering information. I am sure my journey has not ended here. I know brown faces are in my future. I know teaching is too. I know my blog is for what can be shared and that journals must be begun again for that which can't be shared. I am reaching towards the unknown sure that wh...

There are those that remember details that astound me. One of my brothers is like that. He will say things like: In 1972 I was here or there doing this and that. Others will say things like: It was June 20th when I first heard that song. I don't remember anything in this sort of detail. I remember things like: I was leaning against the wall and so and so was dancing at that party wearing a pink dress but if pressed for the date or whereabouts of the memory I will not recall. I take pictures in my heard and once the pieces are arranged correctly in my memory then I am able to remember the entire scene. I need the entire stage set before I can remember a specific detail. Some people have exclaimed to me, upon my saying: I don't remember, that they just can't believe it. They are even more astounded when it was me that initiated the event they are speaking of. I need clues given to me to remember the entire event.  I have thought long about this quirk of mine and I think i...

Moles When I was in my early, early twenties I volunteered at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. I can't even remember what my duties were. What I do remember was that I was taken into a room by a nurse to where a man lay in bed. He was beautiful. His head lolled to the right. He was perhaps no older than 25. His eyes were brown, clear, glassy and failed to focus. You could say he was handsome too. He had no muscle tone; no chest or arm muscle definition. In reality he was a blob. He had a lipstick circumference sized mole on his chest just below his left nipple. The nurse pointed to the mole and said: That is why he is here. I said: I don't understand. She said: His parents thought his mole was ugly and needed to be removed. He got too much/too little anesthesia during surgery and has been brain dead and in this bed for 7 years. I stared at the mole and wondered what light it had been seen under that made that risk worthwhile. We are all beautiful as we are. That mole, th...